During a visit to Williamstown dockyard in Victoria this morning, Defence Minister Stephen Smith rejected suggestions that base security had been compromised by "alleged" spending cuts.

"Let's just very carefully understand what has occurred here," he said.

"Firstly, in 2009, when there was a foiled attempt on Holsworthy [Army Base], the Government immediately committed itself to a review of base security.

"That was a wholesale review. There were some 33 recommendations, 31 of those recommendations have been implemented. Not all of those recommendations have been made public for the obvious reason. And there are two outstanding recommendations which are in the process of being implemented.

"One goes to the capacity of Defence Force personnel to use arms, and legislation to that effect was recently passed through the Parliament.

"And the second is a major infrastructure upgrade over and across 16 priority bases.

"Coonawarra is not one of those bases. Coonawarra has had some substantial change made to it in terms of its arrangement as a result of the review that we instituted.

"We saw the terrible breach in the last few days, the Chief of Navy immediately instituted a review of arrangements at Coonawarra, and at the same time instituted an investigation as to the causes as to that break-in."